Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare

Electronic Arts and PopCap have a release date for Garden Warfare, and
have also put together a nine-minute video showcasing plenty of gameplay
across a number of classes.

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare is coming to Xbox One and Xbox 360 on February 18. There will be visual disparity between the two games, but the other big advantage of playing on Xbox One is that it will offer split-screen gameplay. The Xbox 360 only allows online multiplayer. The Xbox One version of the game also offers Boss Mode, which allows players to use a tablet or the Kinect to manage the battle from above. Both games will be discounted titles at $39.99 on Xbox One and $29.99 on Xbox 360.

The game will ship with 10 maps and three modes: two competitive, and one co-op mode. We spoke with Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare senior producer Brian Lindley and senior franchise manager Gary Clay, and they assured us that any additional future maps and characters will be free to all players. To block them behind a paywall would unnecessarily split the audience. There will be some paid options, however, in the form of card packs with customizations and new weapons. You can purchase these with in-game currency, or buy more currency to speed things along. If you've played Mass Effect 3's multplayer mode, then you will be familiar with this idea.

Garden Warfare was a game that surprised many when it was announced at E3 this year. Clay says one of the big advantages of being acquired by Electronic Arts is the ability to expand its scope on projects like Garden Warfare. “If we'd have been just PopCap, we never would have been able to do something like this,” Clay says. Electronic Arts basically asked PopCap if it had all the time and all the money in the world to do whatever they wanted, what would it do? “We had to keep it super quiet, I genuinely had shower curtains on my office door for months,” Clay says.

"If you've played Mass Effect 3's multplayer mode, then you will be familiar with this idea."

Thanks to the "spend earned points on a random pack of upgrades I probably don't even want" garbage I quit playing ME3 multiplayer quite quickly. If you're saying it's exactly the same for this game then I'm not even going to give this one a try.